damaged people dot com

I have an old PC sitting around. It's a PIII 667mhz (aka: trash box) and decided to install ubuntu on it.

The install was pretty damn easy (once I beat the bios into accepting the CD as the boot device) and it picked up all my hardware just fine.

Insert me for the next two hours, playing dorky games (poker, worms, etc.).

It comes with OpenOffice, gimp, gaim, and firefox as part of the package. Pretty much everything you need to get started.

They also have a "live" cd if you want to play with it but don't want to commit (just burn the iso you download, put it in your CD, and boot the computer). It runs everything from the CD (you'll have to configure your NIC, but that's easy) and when you're done, just shut down, eject the CD, and reboot back to windows.

I did it! I had 2 surplus towers from my Dads work that were just lying around collection dust. They were both idenitical in configuration with one set up with win95 and the other with a failed install of win95.

Spec's of the 2: H/P Brio with PII MMX 300 mhz w/intergrated 2mb graphics. 2 64mb of RAM. 1 large 8GB hard drive. 145w power supply. Aztech sound card w/game port.

Upgrades needed to get to work: 1 Pacom 14" monitor (1986) $15.00. A 3dfx VooDoo 4mb video card $10.00.

Upgrades to the tower: Took one of the H/D's out of one and drilled holes in the case and installed it as a slave to increase the H/D space to 16GB's. Had 2 sticks of 128mb sdram that were too unstable to work on a son's Dell, worked like a charm in this.

Install: Less than perfect. With Ubuntu loadded (took over a hour) it wouldn't start the Gnome. After a few hours of research and head scracthing I decided that it was the intergrated graphics that was the problem. I then re-formatted the drives and tried a differrent Ubuntu package, Ubuntulite. This distribution is geared more towards low-ram systems. I had nothing but trouble with this pkg. It seems to be missing some of the components needed to work. I spent more time on this one and never did get it figured out(I am very new to this). I went back to re-formatting the drives again and re-installing the full version of Ubuntu. I decided that I would need to find a old video card for one last go with it. After getting the 3dfx card installed it would try to start the grapchic interface but would fail with a error report that it wasn't configured for th e card, BINGO! After a hour or so of research in the Ubuntu Forums I found how to get the auto-config to start back up and install the driver for the video card. After a "startx" command, It worked like a charm.

Ubuntu loads frairly fast with this low-ram system. All componets work and seems to run at least 3 times faster than WIN95 did. I am going to get a network card today and see how fast Firefox will work on the internet.

My summary so-far is that at a total cost of $25 I have a very useable and stable system. The extra work I had to put into this has been a good learning experience and I have not regretted it.

I am looking at running it on a old laptop that we have that the kids use. If the 150mhz, 64mb ram can do it I wil be very impressed. I'll keep everone updated.

As I write this, I am testing Ubuntu now.

I have had absolutely no issues installing this as a dual boot on my primary winbox.

I will eventually try it on my old Gateway P2-300. That box, while running hot, was built like a tank - We have some of that same generation at Pullman Hospital and they still work quite well as win98 boxes.

I am using the Ubuntu box right now! Mine is straight Ubuntu Linux (no M$). My biggest problems with the install had to do with adding new hardware afterwards. Being that I am a linux virgin, I am having a rough time remebering the key commands. The biggest help that I have found is that when you are installing new hardware and can't get it to configure, use the install disc and type in "rescue". This will run through the first part of the the install, before the partioning and then go into a auto-configuring mode. This will run a few hardware detect's and let you manually choose from the driver list. It will also allow you to reset any screen resoulutions if you don't choose the simple option.

I can't belive how fast the FireFox runs on this box. It is almost better than my old XP celeron desktop.

Bio, great call on posting about this.